The Moon King by Neil Williamson

Recently Strange Horizons published my review of Neil Williamson’s debut novel The Moon King, and by recently I mean two weeks ago. Obviously this blog is going through another of its periods where I’m too busy to update it (I guess that’s a polite way of saying I’ve been too lazy to write stuff). That won’t change all that soon because tomorrow I’m getting on a plane for London. That’s right, Worldcon is nearly at hand.

I’ve been to two Worldcons before, but this is the first where I’ll attend a Hugo ceremony where I’m kinda, sorta, not-really-but-almost nominated for a Hugo (Speculative Fiction 2012, nominated for a Best Related Work category, contains an essay from this blog about, er, Worldcon) as well as the first where I’ll be on a panel. I may not have been posting, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading because I’m on a panel discussing the best novel Hugo. It’s a funny year to be doing this. Thanks to my obsession with reading series in order, to read as much as I can of the five Best Novel nominees I’ve so far read nine novels and feel distinctly under-prepared. I still have eleven left! Unless I get trapped in an elevator for a a few days I probably won’t finish Wheel of Time, but if you’re at the convention you should still swing by the panel at 7pm Thursday night to hear what the other panelists have to say. As for me, I plan on writing about the nominees on this blog after the convention but, let’s face it, I’m just as likely to never get around to it, so this may be your only chance to hear my amazing insights. If I think of any, that is. Right now, my notes consist of “Wheel of Time seems very long” but then I’ve never been good about taking notes.

I was going to link to the panel description, but Loncon3’s fancy online programming guide doesn’t seem to make this possible obvious (Edit: Niall points out you can keep track of my busy one panel schedule by following this link). Now I know why other participants have been pasting panel descriptions into their posts! Well, here you go:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit US / Orbit UK)
Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross (Ace / Orbit UK)
Parasite by Mira Grant (Orbit US / Orbit UK)
Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia (Baen Books)
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books / Orbit UK)
What should win? What will win? What are the notable omissions?